Paradiso to inferno (part two)

Saturday 29 July 2006 19.30 EDT
First published on Saturday 29 July 2006 19.30 EDT

The following conversations, both between Moggi and Italy's most famous sports commentator Fabio Baldas, show how he worked. Baldas is Italy's Des Lynam, reviewing the weekend's games in his weekly programme. Moggi, with his canny understanding of the media, had worked out that the best way to conceal the bias that referees were repeatedly showing Juventus was by exploiting his contacts in the mass media. His logic was that though 50,000 might see the game live, millions had their opinions formed by men such as Baldas. According to investigators, Baldas and Moggi spoke before nearly every programme to discuss what was going to be said and shown, who was going to be given the Roman thumbs up and who got the thumbs down.

So, on 18 October 2005, Baldas rang Moggi on his mobile.

Baldas: How are you? Well?

Moggi: Good.

Baldas: Listen Luciano, today we haven't got much ... there is ... [just] Rodomonti [the referee for a game between Cagliari-Milan over the weekend, later investigated but cleared by the tribunal]. Is it OK if we make him look bad? If you agree, of course ...

Moggi: Oh naturally.

Baldas: And then? And then? There's always Siena-Fiorentina ...

Moggi: But was there a penalty?

Baldas: Er ... bloody hell, yes, there was a penalty! ... And there Rosetti [a referee, also cleared by the inquiry]. You know the guy ... But if we show him, what are we going to do?

Moggi: No, no, leave him alone ... just drop the Siena game.

Baldas: OK ... if I need a favour will you do me a favour?

Moggi: No problem.

Baldas: You'll call me back soon?

Moggi: Yup, soon.

Baldas: Fine, bye.

There are dozens of such conversations. In fact, according to investigators, Moggi received or made an average of 416 calls per day. He had six mobile phones and 300 sim cards. In nine months, he made or received 100,000 calls.

So is this conversation with Baldas evidence of corruption? Is it match-fixing? Hard to say. Is it even wrong? It certainly smells bad. But it's not as if Baldas got much out of the arrangement. There is no evidence of cash changing hands. Baldas's motivation was much more subtle. The commentator was presented with an offer he could not refuse - in typical Moggi style.

What Baldas did receive in return was access to Juventus and a good source in Moggi - 'Moggi was always really useful, really helpful, always finding stuff out if you asked and calling you back,' said one sports journalist I spoke to in Rome. Also, of course, Moggi had friends everywhere, in the senior ranks of the football federation, in clubs, among players. Moggi's sports agency, GEA, looked after 200 players. It was run by his son, Alessandro, and employed the children of a dozen of the most powerful financiers and sports investors in Italy; the sons of Lazio president Sergio Cragnotti and of Italy coach Marcello Lippi, and Chiara Geronzi (the daughter of Cesare Geronzi, head of Capitalia, the banking group that finances Lazio) were all on staff. If Baldas or anyone else wanted GEA players on their programme, they required Moggi's assent. If Baldas, or anyone else, wanted a pass to Juventus's ground, they needed to be 'a friend'. Because of all the people Moggi was able to manipulate, Baldas was easily manipulated. That, to repeat, was how the Moggi system worked.

But sports journalists are hardly the key to throwing games. For that you need referees.

Here things are a little clearer - though not much. The following is not a conversation you would often hear, one hopes, between the general manager of a football club and the head of a national referees' association. It takes place a day after a Champions League third qualifying round game in Turin on 10 August 2004 in which an unfancied Swedish side, Djurgaarden, held Juventus to a 2 ...#8209;2 draw after the Italians had a goal disallowed. Moggi is talking to Pierluigi 'Gigi' Pairetto, head of the referees' association.

Moggi: Gigi, what fuck of a referee did you send us?

Pairetto: [Herbert] Fandel? He's number one, he's a top guy.

Moggi: Yes, whatever, but Miccoli's goal was valid.

Pairetto: No.

Moggi: It's valid, it's valid.

Pairetto: No, it was right in front [of the ref].

Moggi: What are you talking about ... it wasn't in front ... the entire game was an absolute disaster.

Pairetto: But you know he [i.e. Fandel] is one of the best guys.

Moggi: Well, I tell you, he can really fuck off. I have to make the return match in Stockholm secure no?

Pairetto: For fuck's sake ... mamma mia ... this [one] really has to be a proper game.

Moggi: No, we are going to win ... but with another [referee] like [Fandel] it's going to be a bit difficult no? You follow me?

Moggi then gives orders for the upcoming Juventus v Messina friendly, naming various referees and linesmen.

Moggi: For Messina, send me Consolo and Battaglia ... with Cassara eh? [None of these officials is suspected of any offence.]

Pairetto: Done already.

Moggi: And who did you send?

Pairetto: I think it's Consola and Battaglia. I've even sorted the friendly in Livorno. It's all fine.

Moggi: In Livorno, Rocchi [a referee who is eventually investigated but cleared] eh?

Pairetto: Yes, its Rocchi in Livorno.

Moggi: And [against Milan] ... it has to be Pieri.

Pairetto: We haven't done that yet.

Moggi: OK, we'll see to that later.

The referee at the Milan v Juve game on 28 August 2004 is Pieri and Juve win 1-0.

On 23 August, before the second leg of the Djurgaarden game, Moggi and Pairetto discuss the crucial European match (see panel on page 36). Pairetto assures Moggi that Juventus will win 4-1. And they do.

A week later Pairetto calls Moggi again, once more about the Champions League. Juventus were due to play their opening group game against Ajax in Amsterdam.

Moggi: Hello.

Pairetto: Hey, have you forgotten me? I always remember you!

Moggi: Oh come on

Pairetto: Hey, I've put in a great referee for the Amsterdam game.

Moggi: Who's that then?

Pairetto: It's Meier [Urs Meier, a Swiss referee].

Moggi: Well done!

Pairetto: I only called you to tell you that. See I remember you, even if you these days ...

Moggi: Oh, don't break my balls. You'll see that when I'm back you'll realise that I haven't forgotten you ...

On 15 September 2004 Juventus played Ajax in Amsterdam and won 1-0. The referee was indeed Urs Meier. He is now working as a pundit on German television, but has not been investigated and nor is he suspected of any offence. However, so far seven Italian referees and linesman have been banned as a result of the investigation. Piaretto and his deputy have both resigned. No one has proved that the referees have done anything criminally wrong and though it is clear from the transcripts that some were preferred by Moggi, presumably because they favoured Juventus, there is no evidence of cash exchanging hands. There is some evidence of the gift of a few tickets, a mobile phone, a short cut to the front of the lengthy waiting list for a Maserati, but nothing serious. Perhaps evidence of big cash gifts will emerge - criminal investigations are still going on - but perhaps it won't. Many think that there were no such gifts.

So why did the referees, who in Italy are relatively well paid professionals, and Pairetto do what they did?

'Because they had no real choice, because they were weak, because they were ambitious, because they were caught up in a corrupt system,' says one sports expert who did not want to be named.

'If they didn't favour Juventus they wouldn't get picked to referee big games. If they displeased Moggi, they might lose their jobs,' said biographer Travaglio.

It is true that one referee was locked in his changing room and threatened by Moggi, but that's relatively mild by local standards. It's not as if he woke up with a horse's head on his doorstep. Like Pairetto, who knew that Moggi was powerful enough to have him fired, the only possibility is that referees very much wanted to be Moggi's friend. And very much did not want to be his enemy.

Reading back through hundreds more pages of transcripts, the lines of the Moggi system start to become clearer. There are Moggi's attempts to influence the selection of opposing teams through his GEA agency, there is the occasion when, allegedly, Moggi tried to persuade a government minister to give the go-ahead to games that were set to be cancelled because of the imminent death of Pope John Paul II (Juventus were scheduled to play a Fiorentina side lacking two players suspended and two injured). There is nothing as crude as an exchange of cash, just friendship and favours. And when you have one man who has so much power, built up over so many years, through so many friendships and so many thousands of favours, from the very top levels of administration to the scouts in unknown provincial grounds, no one individual can resist. You are either inside - and safe and comfortable - or outside the system - which is a very lonely place to be.

Professor Andrea Manzella is a senior jurist and a senator in Romano Prodi's ruling coalition. His office overlooks the Piazza Navona, one of the most famous in Rome, with its 17th century church of St Agnes, Bernini fountains and tourist-trap cafes. The church was built on the site where, according to legend, St Agnes was stripped naked but miraculously saved from disgrace by extraordinary growth of hair.

When Manzella arrives, I ask him to explain how the Moggi system worked. 'It is a very Italian thing,' he says, exactly as Bondini had done. 'Here in Italy you have this atmosphere of continual compromise with the law. You don't break the law ... but you don't exactly stick to it either.' Manzella explains that Moggi's aim was not so much to rig matches, or gain immediate personal advantage, but create the most propitious environment for a team and thus success. 'What Moggi was doing was trying to stop something bad happening to something that was important to him and encourage something good happening to him. This is very Italian. And the more friends you have, the better you can do it.

'It's a cultural weakness. So much of Italian society is genuinely meritocratic, but there is also a widespread idea that to get on you need a little bit of extra help, however that is enacted and defined.'

Others have told me that the scandal could never have come out under the previous administration of Silvio Berlusconi, whose right-wing government was ousted by a left-wing coalition led by Romano Prodi in a close, bitterly contested election in April. It is not just that Berlusconi is owner and president of AC Milan, one of the clubs implicated in the scandal, but that the media magnate and former nightclub singer epitomises, for so many, the 'old way' of doing business in Italy. Prodi and his administration hope to use the investigation of Moggi and his system to show that a new integrity has entered Italian political and social life.

Shamed by relegation, Juventus now claim to be regulating themselves. The club, listed on the Italian stock exchange since 2001, have hired a London-based public relations firm to talk to the press. Their line is much as you would expect from a major corporation that has suffered a boardroom scandal. Their majority shareholders - effectively the Agnelli family, who own the car manufacturers Fiat - forced the resignation of all the senior directors and have put in a new administration. 'Juventus have turned over a new leaf,' said a spokesman, with stark unoriginality. 'They are saying something has to change in Italian football. The sentences are pretty draconian. Going down to Serie B means a hit of at least €50m a year.'

But if Juventus are admitting their faults, few others are. The affair spiralled rapidly beyond the Turin club, something that is not surprising given the all-pervasive, insidious nature of the Moggi system. As we know, three other clubs have been severely punished. According to the judges AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio did not benefit quite as substantially as Juventus but did profit from what was going on. The details of what they are alleged to have done remain sketchy but it appears that the three teams received favours from Moggi and his small army of compliant administrators and referees. There are several games that are suspected of being rigged - though all the three clubs deny wrongdoing and are standing by their top officials.

One afternoon, armed with two transcripts that are the basis for the charges against the president of Lazio, Claudio Lotito, I meet the club's lawyers in an office in Rome. The transcripts show Franco Carraro (the president of the Italian Football Federation) calling Pairetto (the head of the referees' association) in February this year, three weeks before Lazio played Chievo in a game that investigators believe was fixed. 'Listen,' Carraro says, 'we need to give Lazio a hand ...' Lotito then talks to the vice-president of the Federation and says: 'So you have spoken to Carraro ... that's good ... that means he is on my side.' Shortly afterwards Lotito is called by the vice-president of the football federation, a close associate of Moggi. 'We need to save ourselves however we can,' he says. 'They are going to arrest you.' A few days later Lazio play Parma. The referee, himself found guilty by the tribunal of corruption, controversially disallowed a Parma penalty; Lazio won 2-0.

Lazio's lawyers can explain all this. 'Lazio have done nothing wrong,' one says. The apparent request for help is actually a demand for more professional referees, he explains, and says that the mention of arrests is 'a joke'. Lotito's interlocutor is apparently a Tuscan and thus 'naturally effusive'.

Lazio are not the only ones to deny any wrong-doing. Moggi's lawyer proved evasive when I tried to contact him. However the lawyer for Antonio Giraudo, the former chief executive at Juventus, does speak. Giraudo has been forced to resign by Juventus, banned from the game and fined by the tribunal. His lawyer hopes to clear his name. 'It's not as if he was altering matches or creating a whole new world of football,' the lawyer says. 'There was no "system". It was just the dutiful acts of a loyal friend and colleague. It was all totally normal.'

So it's all normal. It's all business as usual in Serie A.

On 17 July, Moggi spoke to the newspaper La Repubblica in Follonica in his native Tuscany.

'How are you Mr Moggi? And are you going to return to the world of football?' the reporters asked. 'I'm very well,' Moggi replied. 'My sister said she has never seen me so relaxed ... Of course [I'll return to football] ... but this time I'm going to be the guy who breaks everybody's balls. I'll finger them all, by their first names and their surnames. I'll break the balls of all the false moralists of this world who think that everything is clean now because they got rid of ... Luciano Moggi.'

Marco Travaglio, for once, agrees with the subject of his best-selling biography. 'Throughout history, Italian football has been known as a world of bandits,' he said. 'Now that Moggi has been banned it won't be any cleaner ... and Moggi will leave scars too.'

As Moggi ponders his future this weekend he at least knows one thing for certain: Lucky Luciano is down, but he is far from being out.

Story of a scandal

2004 Italian police, investigating claims of organised doping of players, begin to tap the phones of leading officials.

February 2006 The police, having found evidence of match-fixing, show it to the Italian Football Federation (FIGC). April Silvio Berlusconi, president of AC Milan, is replaced as Italian Prime Minister by Romano Prodi after a close-fought election.

9 May FIGC president Franco Carraro resigns after it emerges they have taken no action on the transcripts since February. Moggi and the Juve board resign two days later. Massimo de Santis, the Italian referee due to take part in the World Cup, has to withdraw.

14 May Juve retain the Serie A title.

24 May Francesco Borrelli, head of the 'Clean Hands' probe into political corruption in the 1990s, is to lead the investigation . The only person not to co-operate is Lucian o Moggi .

3 June A week before the World Cup starts, Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro, a Juventus player, has to fly home to be questioned. 19 June Borrelli hands over the results of his interviews to the FIGC's prosecutor, Stefano Palazzi. Trading in Juve shares is suspended.

22 June Fiorentina, Juventus, Lazio and Milan are to stand trial before a sporting tribunal.

27 June Juventus's new sporting director, Gianluca Pessotto, is found seriously injured in the street outside the club's HQ after an apparent suicide bid.

4 July Palazzi recommends that Juventus, Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio be thrown out of Serie A, with Juventus relegated to at least Serie C and handed a six-point penalty.

9 JulyCannavaro lifts the World Cup after victory over France. On their return home, the players go to see Pessotto, a former Italy defender, who is recovering in hospital.

14 JulyJuventus, Fiorentina and Lazio are relegated, with Milan just deducted points. All punishments are subject to appeal.

The verdicts

Juventus

· Relegated to Serie B · Start the new league season with minus 30 points · Stripped of 2005 and 2006 league titles · Out of 2006-07 Champions League · Five-year ban for former general manager Luciano Moggi · Five-year ban for ex-chief executive Antonio Giraudo

Fiorentina

· Relegated to Serie B · Start the new league season with minus 12 points · Out of 2006-07 Champions League · President Andrea Della Valle banned for three years and six months · Four-year ban for honorary president Diego Della Valle

Lazio

· Relegated to Serie B · Start new league season with minus seven points · Out of 2006-07 Uefa Cup · Three-year ban for president Claudio Lotito

AC Milan

· Remain in Serie A but start season with minus 15 points · Out of 2006-07 Champions League · One-year ban for vice-president Adriano Galliani · Club official Leonardo Meani banned for 42 months

(All verdicts subject to appeal)

Dramatis personae

Luciano Moggi The former railway-station ticket-office manager from Tuscany began his career in football as a youth scout for Juventus in the early 1970s. He then worked in administration for Roma, Torino and Napoli before returning to Juve as general manager in 1994. The 69-year-old resigned from the club in May and has now been banned from the game for five years, with the possibility of a life ban, and fined €50,000.

Pierluigi Pairetto A former referee who oversaw World Cup and European Championship matches in the Nineties, Pairetto progressed to become head of the Italian referees' association, in which role he allocated officials to Serie A matches. Until June, he was a vice-chairman of Uefa's referees committee and has since been reprimanded by the European football authority for his role in the Italian scandal.

Alessandro Moggi Son of Luciano, the 33-year-old heads a player agency, GEA World, which he created in 2001 and is now said to represent more than half the players in Serie A, including almost all the Juventus squad. Initial reports claimed that his father had used this connection to pressure GEA players into underperforming against Juve. GEA is currently under investigation by magistrates for recruiting players by intimidation .

Fabio Baldas A former referee who began his career in 1981 in Serie C, Baldas was promoted to the international ranks in 1991, officiating at the 1994 World Cup. Since retiring in 1998, Baldas was a pundit on Italy's longest running football programme, Il Processo (The Trial), analysing replays of controversial match incidents. He was caught speaking to Luciano Moggi about the tone of coverage on the show, and has since resigned.

Gianluigi Buffon The Juventus goalkeeper comes from a sporting family as his mother was a discus thrower, his father a weightlifter and his two sisters volleyball players. He started his career at Parma in 1996 at the age of 17 and won his first cap for Italy at 19. In 2001 he signed for Juventus for a world-record fee for a keeper of £33m. In May 2006, he was accused of betting on Serie A matches while with Parma, though none involved his own club, and he submitted himself to questioning as part of the official investigation. Despite this, he was one of Italy's best players during their World Cup campaign, conceding just two goals in the finals - one was an own goal and the other a penalty. He is currently engaged to the former Miss Czech Republic, Alena Seredova.

Antonio Giraudo Having worked for Juventus owners Giovanni and Umberto Agnelli as an executive at Fiat, Giraudo, 59, was brought in as the club's managing director in 1994. Juve made a profit for seven straight years under him. After featuring in the phone taps in conversation with Luciano Moggi, he, and the rest of the board, resigned on 11 May. He has been banned from football for five years and fined €20,000.

Franco Carraro The president of the Italian Football Federation resigned on 8 May but remains a member of Uefa's executive committee. Carraro, 66, was European water-skiing champion three times in his early twenties. He became president of AC Milan at 27 and has also been Minister for Tourism and mayor of Rome. Carraro has been a member of the International Olympic Committee and presided over Italy's organisation of the 1990 World Cup.

· Jason Burke is The Observer's Europe Correspondent. He wrote about match-fixing in Europe in our January 2006 issue